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But very practical, and should have happened sooner. The overall efficiency of our society will increase if people buy more things at local stores. Less gas wasted on shipping, more money staying in its own communities.

Screw the constitution. It is out of date, but people keep standing behind it trying to justify their stance. The constitution is difficult to change and enough people will lose power if any part of it does that they can put a stop to it changing. Some parts I approve of, but that is no excuse for people to keep treating it as the absolute unchanging principal that defines the United States.

I do agree with allowing tax of online sales should not be different than local stores, but I disagree with your reaso

That is not a problem which needs to be addressed now, yo! This discussion is also wandering off topic so I'll try and rope it back: The founding fathers screwed up in not considering internet commerce.

Some of the amendments (in addition to the original) have aged well over time, and I agree with mostly. Others I disagree with. Others still are simply irrelevant in today's time (like the 3rd). I won't let the decisions of past people define the proper way for civilization to be run. Any law, or guideline has a limit to how long it is relevant as long as society changes. In 100 years many of our laws work seem barbaric, short sighted and simply ones that can't be used in the light of changing technology.

The first amendment is out of date. It needs to be extended with the word electronic as currently it seems that electronic papers aren't covered and many people seem to think it should have some exceptions added for things like child porn and national security. Currently it is disregarded in the above circumstances.The second amendment needs to have "well regulated" better defined as that language has changed, same with arms and also why is it OK to have a blanket ban on a class of people owning arms, namel

If it's "unconstitutional as heck," then no, no it absolutely should not have happened sooner. You don't just get to flagrantly violate the Constitution -- you know, the document that enumerates states' and citizens' rights -- because it somehow promotes local tribalism. Go amend the Constitution if you want to make something unconstitutional suddenly constitutional. Otherwise, you just basically said it's a good idea to flagrantly violate the fundamental law that has serves as the core of the United States because it affirms your limited idea of what constitutes economic efficiency.

If a state's sales tax is so high that it is more economically efficient to ship the product from a different state at least 48 hours transit time away than to buy from within the state, it's a pretty clear indication that the tax is too high, or the distribution models within the state are lacking. By your logic, we should violate the GATT 1994 and place punitive tariffs on incoming products from China because they rob hardworking Americans U.S. jobs. Because clearly that's a more logical and economically friendly policy than reducing the number of domestic legislative restrictions that sent those jobs overseas in the first place.

I think the commerce clause is pretty clear that the constitution authorizes the federal government to regulate interstate commerce. Considering that this bill is specifically targeted towards goods ordered and shipped from out of state, it clearly falls under the purview of the commerce clause. It's not even a taxing bill, since it merely specifies that retailers such as amazon must conform to state and local laws in regards to sale. What is exactly "unconstitutional" about this idea?

Yes, but the states had that right already as they weren't regulating interstate commerce with the taxation. They were taxing in and out of state retailers the same based upon where the items were being shipped to and the person buying the goods was the one being taxed.

The federal government is just stepping in to provide an enforcement mechanism that the states didn't have due to a lack of jurisdiction over the retailer.

The only change here is that the states will be paid for the money that they were suppo

What you describe is mutually exclusive, and therein lies the problem. If it's a federal tax then it does fall under the purview of the Commerce Clause, which would make it legal although nevertheless a very bad idea, because it doesn't solve the alleged problem (i.e. states not able to recoup revenue). However, as you point out, that's not what is going on at all. The bill specifies that Amazon must conform to state and local tax laws which are attempting to tax Amazon based on sales to the state despit

I'm not a lawyer, but the idea of forcing people to obey laws in jurisdictions other than where they're located seems wrong to me. How on earth is anyone supposed to figure out what the law is in tens of thousands of different jurisdictions across the country? It's impossible.

If they want to fix the sales tax "loophole", at the federal level, it's easy: pass a law requiring e-merchants to collect sales tax based on the merchant's physical location. That's already the way it is if you buy stuff in person: you dont pay sales tax based on your home address, you pay based on where the store is. Why should e-commerce be any different? Moreover, if you have some dispute with the tax authorities, it'd only be the authorities in your own state and locality, not some authorities 2500 miles away in some state and small town you've never heard of or visited before, and you'd go to your local courthouse to resolve the dispute, instead of being required to fly across the country to do so.

But very practical, and should have happened sooner. The overall efficiency of our society will increase if people buy more things at local stores. Less gas wasted on shipping, more money staying in its own communities.

Less gas wasted on shipping? Considering that the vast majority of consumer goods are not produced locally, how do they get to the local stores?

"The overall efficiency of our society will increase if people buy more things at local stores. Less gas wasted on shipping..."

Right. Because one hybrid-powered UPS delivery truck delivering 50 packages to 50 homes on a computer generated best-path-least-turns route is less efficient than 50 people climbing into 50 SUVs and driving to and from 50 different local stores to buy 50 different items that were themselves shipped to each of those stores.

While I mostly agree with you, it's not quite that simple, and calculating the net environmental impact would be in fact a monstrous task.

When I order a widget from some guy in china, and he ships it to me directly, it will generally go air mail, if I go to the local walmart and buy the widget, it probably came in a container of widgets by sea and by train. both of which are far more efficient shipping methods than air. for the local part of the delivery you are correct, the UPS truck is probably more effic

In what sense is it unconstitutional? Congress expressly has the authority to regulate interstate commerce. Here they are planning to add a requirement, to inter-state commercial transactions, that the seller collect whatever sales taxes are required at the destination of the sale.

It would be unconstitutional for states themselves to levy a tax on out-of-state retailers with no local presence, because 1) they lack jurisdiction over out-of-state retailers to regulate them as local retailers; and 2) they cann

But very practical, and should have happened sooner. The overall efficiency of our society will increase if people buy more things at local stores. Less gas wasted on shipping, more money staying in its own communities.

Wrong on every count.

While people do buy things online out of convenience, that is only one small part of the story. While I would really like to support local business, I can't because of one simple fact -- local stores rarely have what I want. And so I buy a lot of stuff online. If I need something like computer components, the only "local stores" are a Best Buy which only carries an extremely limited range of products at inflated prices and a MicroCenter 50 miles away. Where's the efficiency in that?

If "local stores" had everything that people wanted, then online business couldn't exist. But they don't. And it's not even possible. You can't have gigantic stores that stock millions of items in every city and every small town. That would be ridiculous, horrendously inefficient and unworkable, not to mention unprofitable. But large online businesses, like Amazon, etc. can have a few big warehouses around the country that stock millions of items. This gives consumers greater choices and the ability to buy what they want rather than be limited to whatever is sitting on a shelf in a "local store".

Buying from large centrally located business, like Amazon, Ebay, Newegg, etc is in fact more efficient than 200 million people driving all over the place, going from store to store trying to find what they want.

I drove to Target just to get some dinner plates. They were out of stock - not a single plate on the shelf. While walking out of the store I ordered some off of Amazon. They arrived 2 days later on my doorstep.

Dude, give up while you still can. Grandparent has 'buy local' religion...you're essentially trying to convince the same kind of person who believes that vaccines cause autism that they might be wrong about something...

Think of that word 'regulate' to mean 'make regular' instead of the modern definition of 'control every aspect'. Congress is authorized to fix issues like not being allowed to purchase health insurance from a provider outside of one's own state of residence. Congress is not authorized to redefine state tax laws, except in very specific cases [uscon.mobi].

Nature, in the production of things, always designs them to partake of certain, regulated, established essences, which are to be the models of all things to be produced: this, in that crude sense, would need some better explication. Locke.

Sens. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the other lead Senate co-sponsors along with Durbin, argue the bill will actually protect states' rights. They note that it would not force any state to collect taxes, and argue that states that choose to tax online purchases could lower other rates.

Considering that taxes officially apply even to barter transactions (not that anyone ever declares them), and especially considering that there was another recent article on here talking about how bitcoin is now subject to many of the same regulations as normal currency (like reporting transactions over a set dollar threshold) then yes. this does.

Of course some currencies and transactions are easier to hide than others, but that doesn't make it legal, only likely.

Don't. Every state already has the power to equalize internet and local sales taxes, by abolishing its local sales tax.

The sales tax is regressive and discourages commerce. Because this goes contrary to the welfare and commerce clauses of the U.S. Constitution, the federal government should be actively discouraging the use of a sales tax, not encouraging it.

Further, the sales tax encourages cities to offer incentives to big-box stores and give them a competitive advantage over small businesses. On the other

Not going to happen. The likelihood of Congress passing up a chance to extend a tax is about the same as them passing up a chance to let themselves off the hook for insider trading. Which was cute, by the way...amazing the lack of debate, and pure speed with which that bill was apparently passed into law.

The title of the summary is STUPID and most of the commenters have absolutely no clue whatsoever what this is. It's not an "internet sales tax", guys. It is simply legilation which would ALLOW the states to collect state sales tax on purchases made via the web, just as they do on other purchases. It doesn't mandate that any state has to do it. It just removes a barrier that currently exists, whereby no state may enlist and compel the services of internet sellers to collect that state's sales tax for them. It doesn't give the FEDS any additional power to collect any new federal tax whatsoever.

Most or all states already require their own taxpayers to volunteer purchases they made out of state, by WHATEVER means, and cough up the sales tax for same on their tax return. Of course only about one millionth of taxpayers are sucker enough to so volunteer. All this does is make payment unavoidable by burdening the red tape and collection on the sellers.

I am entirely against the measure, on various grounds, but come on, let's at least realize what this is.

"to allow states to tax online sales to residents outside their state" is exactly backwards! The taxing would, if directed by the state, apply to sales to residents _in_ that state. The writer probably confused "sales by vendors outside the state" with "sales to residents outside the state" for some bizarre reason.

All this does is make payment unavoidable by burdening the red tape and collection on the sellers.

That seems like a good thing if you think "Amazon". It doesn't seem like such a good thing if you think "mom-and-pop business" or "part-time open source hardware hacker". They now need to deal with dozens of different states' tax laws and regulations.

The fact that Amazon backs this tax shows you that they view it as a great way of protecting them from competition by creating barriers to entry.

Is to read a tax thread on slashdot, that the rest of the world isn't this burblingly insane gives hope.

Yes states can collect excise taxes, and yes this bill is constitutional. "On a computer" or "over the internet" do not make fundamental law vanish. Whether state sales taxes are a good idea, is a different question, one of policy, not law.

The states can collect the taxes from entities within their jurisdiction. My understanding is that this bill requires entities outside a given state's jurisdiction to collect the taxes. That is unconstitutional.

The feds should impose an interstate commerce tax, say 9% and give 3% to the ship-from state and 3% to the ship-to state and the feds grab 3%.States with no sales taxes, their 3% is omitted.

This will give states a bite of in and out traffic, that they get little of now. Not as much as the states full taxes, but they lose most of that now. 3% of both ways is a lot btter than what they have now. It will give the feds something to erase debt, it waill act as a leveller of the playing field.States will have to

Every year average Americans pay dozens of different types of taxes, and yet many of our politicians are very open about the fact that they want to raise rates even higher and invent even more ways to bleed us all dry. Someday historians will look back and be absolutely amazed at how stupid we were. We have the most complicated tax code in all of human history and at this point the federal tax code is more than four times as long as the entire collected works of William Shakespeare (close to four million

First off, IRS penalty and interest are NOT taxes. That is for lazy or corrupt individuals.
Secondly, perhaps you can push for one large tax of say 50% and be done with it.

Thirdly,
He can realise that most of those are optional and consumption taxes. So he cant treat them as income taxes.

I get these idiots on Australian forums all the time trying to prove that we pay 50, 60 and sometimes even 80% tax by dragging up some obscure 3 cent sugar free chocolate cent tax that only applies in the western half of Wagga Wagga that 99.9998% people wont ever pay.

If you pay 7% sales tax, you pay 7% on what you buy (not what you save or invest) so it doesn't amount to 7% of your inc

All the software and systems for this are already in place for 24 states. [streamlinedsalestax.org] There are services which will do a sales tax calculation for you [taxcloud.net], or you can download all the data files The required inputs are ZIP code (9 digit ZIP code in a few cases where a ZIP code crosses a tax boundary), product class, and date (for "sales tax holidays"). It's complex because the interstate consortium that does this has to accommodate all the vagaries of state sales tax law in each state.

The idea is that small businesses sign up with a service provider, and send them one check for all state taxes plus an XML file of the transactions. Big businesses will probably run their own software. Expect to see this as a standard component of most shopping cart programs.

What the Federal law is about is getting all the states on board for this, and applying it nationally. There's even a huge loophole - "Online sellers with less than $1,000,000 in remote sales annually will be exempt from collection requirements. Remote sales are sales to customers in states where the seller does not already have a physical presence." eBay lobbied for that, yet they're still whining about the law.

Right, because that's just what I want. Someone else who has all of my online purchase history.

Plus, it's not that simple. 99% of all retailers calculate total price as base plus tax. Almost all online shopping software supports doing state taxes, but retailers are going to want to charge you the tax at checkout time. This means you feed an XML file into your software, then write a different check to each government. You could have an organization write the individual checks, but you're still billing t

Skip the sales tax and simply apply a VAT tax to everything that is sold to a retailer. In addition, if anything is shipped from foreign sources directly to the user (i.e. a retailer), then they pay the VAT as part of the import.

Everyone seems to be missing a key issue here. Everyone is constantly complaining about the high costs of everything. Gasoline? Too expensive. Food? Too expensive. Healthcare? Too expensive. Satellite TV? Too expensive. And on, and on, and on. Why the hell isn't government too expensive? If I have to make do with less, then so does the government.

Most people have never run a business selling something and therefore have no clue how much time it takes to deal with sales taxes. In most states, even if you have no sales in any given month, you still have to file the paperwork. Proponents of this tax keep saying that it will "level the playing field for brick&mortar stores". Bzzzt. Wrong. A mom & pop brick & mortar store only sells locally therefore they don't have to deal with the out-of-state sales taxes. That effectively gives them an advantage rather than leveling the playing field. Furthermore, big box stores such as Wal-mart don't give a damn because they already have an army of accountants to deal with the paperwork.

And then who in each local state government is going to process the paperwork suddenly coming in from 49 other states? Oh, well, gee whiz, we don't have enough bureaucrats to deal with it so we'll have to hire more...and pay them...and give them benefits...and a pension...all at taxpayer expense. But wait, this tax was supposed to close budget shortfalls. Oops. Now you've compounded them.

And ultimately, this will lead to only one thing: inflation. Because nobody is going to take the extra costs up the a$$. They are going to pass it on to the consumer. A VAT tax won't solve this either. In fact it will make it worse because invariably there are sticky fingers all along the government food chain.

What are you talking about? This doesn't change anything. You were supposed to be paying that tax anyways, if you live in a state with sales and use taxes. All this does is make it so that your state and local governments get the taxes they're owed.

If you don't like this, then push your officials to change over to an income tax from a sales tax.

Well, it's called "sales" tax not "buying" tax. Makes sense to collected it at point of sale:-/

So if amazon movies to a state with no sales tax, it makes sense to collect their *local* tax for all customers (even those outside of that state). Perhaps what they're really interested in is interstate commerce tax, since that's what this is in disguise---except that would be unconstitutional....Why are they spending their efforts in creating a regressive tax instead of just getting rid of sales tax everywhere

Amazon supports this bill. They understand that closing off the opportunity for a company to grow on avoiding stat sales taxes is in their best interest because they know better than anyone how successful that model is.

That would be unconstitutional, federal government cannot force a retailer to collect local taxes.

Why not, specifically? They're explicitly permitted to regulate interstate commerce, and a vendor in one state selling to a customer in another state most certainly sounds like it to me. Remember they can use it in the negative "No interstate commerce is permitted unless the vendor has collected any applicable sales tax of the destination state" so strictly speaking they're not forcing anyone to do anything, it's a condition for doing interstate business. If you don't like it, don't sell outside your state.

All taxes are THEFT and are UNCONSTITUTIONAL, as are the parts of the constitution that authorize UNCONSTITUTIONAL taxes.

(emphasis changed)

I'm having a hard time figuring out how a part of the constitution can be unconstitutional. (Not being from the USA I can't tell you every line of your constitution, but that sentence simply doesn't parse)

Not being from the USA, you obviously cannot comprehend just how insane many of our citizens are, and what kind of wacky convoluted arguments they'll come up with which defy all logic and reason.

Yes, you're right, as this is quite simple: if it's part of the Constitution (and that includes the Amendments), then by definition, it's "constitutional". Furthermore, newer Amendments overrule old ones, so it doesn't matter if the original Constitutional text, or some of Amendments 1-10 could be construed as forb

The government does a lot of crap that I disagree with. And, in fact, I see a lot of their crap as unconstitutional. But - the concept that all taxes are unconstitutional is pretty insane.

The federal income tax clearly has a lot of constitutionality issues surrounding it. Social security has some. Sales taxes? No way. Local governments are largely funded by sales taxes. They have to be funded from SOMEWHERE, so they are funded by local sales. When the internet was new, internet sales were exempted from local sales tax. Now, congress is going to change that. How is it unconstitutional? If anything, the exemption was unconstitutional, because it interfered with local government's ability to generate legitimate revenues.

Lighten up dude - not all taxes are unconstitutional. Taxes suck, but they are a necessary evil. Concentrate on those taxes that are actually unconstitutional, or at least very controversial.

As for which jurisdiction collects taxes on internet sales - the purchaser's home address serves as a point of contact, for billing purposes, mailing purposes, and for tax purposes.

The Constitution does not grant Congress the power to regulate state level taxation, to force one to pay taxes in another state, or to collect the taxes on behalf of another state..

The issues that most complain about regarding income taxes are the methods of collection and enforcement. For example, the 5th amendment is supposed to protect us from self-incrimination, but a tax filing is self-incrimination. The IRS has its own tax courts, which do not follow due process. The right to assistance of counsel in

WTF? Income tax is not unconstitutional, it's by definition part of the constitution. Go read the 16th Amendment; they passed that just so they could have an income tax. And no, it's not "voluntary"; the amendment is extremely concise and says nothing about such tax being "voluntary". There's a reason this is called an "amendment": it overrules anything older in the Constitution that might be construed as forbidding it. Just because you don't like a particular amendment (I don't care for the 17th mysel

You are talking about things that you didn't in fact think about. You should go read the 16th, then go read the link to my comment where I explain that what is in the amendment is not in fact authorisation to collect an income tax. It is an allowance to tax 'income' (without defining what that is) without apportionment.

I DID read the 16th; it's extremely short and concise and there's really no way to misunderstand it. It lets you tax income. It doesn't have to define it, the definition is fairly obvious,

... And so he was right wasn't he... Perhaps you should go re-read your linked article and actually understand what Substantive due process is before you try to tell someone else. You seem to not have any fucking idea what ratification requires. In short, I'm fairly certain you don't have any clue how the America government actually works.

A state, or even half the states in teh country can't modify the constitution. Just because Old Miss decides to chain up the negras doesn't actually make it part of

John lives in New Jersey, but only a few miles away from the Pennsylvania state line. The nearest town from him is 20 miles away, but just 3 miles away from him is Stroudsburg, PA, a decently-sized town. Because of proximity, naturally John regularly drives over the border to this town to do all his grocery shopping and other shopping. Which state does John pay his sales tax to? Simple: it all goes to Pennsylvania, not New Jersey which he resides in. Sales tax is levied at the merchant's location, not the customer's.

Here's another similar analogy: it's 1975, and the internet doesn't exist. John wants to buy a quadrophonic stereo system, and he wants a particular model. No one in his state has the model he wants, however he calls around a lot (costing him a pretty penny in long-distance charges), and finds one at a specialty retailer in Boston, several states away. He doesn't want to trust any private shippers or the USPS with delivering this expensive piece of delicate equipment, so he drives 5 hours to Boston to pick it up in person. At the shop there, he has to pay sales tax. Does the retailer charge him based on his home address? Of course not; he has to pay the exact same sales tax that any local Bostonite would, and that tax money goes to Massachusetts and Boston (assuming Boston has a separate municipal sales tax as many cities do). John's home state of New Jersey doesn't get a cent.

So will someone please explain why these sales tax initiatives require the retailer to charge tax based on the customer's location, rather than the retailer's location? If I set up a shop in Kansas (with no mail orders or internet orders), all my customers, no matter how far they drive to visit me, will have to pay sales tax to the state of Kansas. It doesn't matter if they have an Oregon driver's license and try to argue they don't owe tax because OR has no sales taxes. If you're in KS and buy something, yo pay KS sales tax. So why should it be an different for internet sales? It'd surely make calculations a lot easier for any merchants, big or small, and be a boon to their localities and states. Of course, one might argue that a bunch of merchants might move their operations to tax-free jurisdictions like OR, but that's just too bad for high-tax states, and besides, many small business people don't have the capital to just pack up and move cross-country based on this one factor, or they might not be willing to leave all their family and friends just because of that. And secondly, for large corporations with operations in many states, this would complicate things and would certainly require special legislation so they can't just stick a small office in a tax-free state to avoid charging sales tax.

That's not alway true. I live in Oregon, and I buy stuff in Washington and fill out a short, simple form with my Oregon ID and pay no sales tax. Washington has what most states have now, a "use based" sales tax which means it depends not upon where the item is sold, but where it's primary use will be, which means the tax actually does depend upon the resident's location. I know this because I've recently had to implement such a system for a Washington and Oregon based business with almost 200 retail location. between the two states.

Does that also apply when you've already paid taxes in the state where the purchase was made? So if I drive to the next state, and eat a meal there, and pay taxes on that meal (let's say that the taxes are actually higher in the restaurant's state than in my own), then I'm supposed to pay taxes again in my own state? That's double taxation, and doesn't sound quite right.

What this example really shows is that sales tax, for all of the theoretical perfection it has, is probably the tax structure with the highest frictional cost. Between the bureaucracy required to figure out who pays what, to the individuals that need to file the reams of paperwork to document what was paid when, to the time wasted by consumers attempting to estimate tax on a purchase, just pick any other way to raise revenue, it'll be better.

No, it shows that sales tax, as currently implemented in the Unites States, is a horrible mess and has a high frictional cost. It doesn't mean it has a high frictional cost all the time; if they wiped out all state and local sales taxes, and replaced them with a single federal sales tax, it'd be easy and would have much lower enforcement costs than federal income tax does (since you'd only need to collect from companies in this scenario, not individuals). I believe that's sorta how it's done in the EU wit

The retailers are not using any state subsidized utilities except for postal service. Instead of doing this, they should just run postal service at cost and finish off the issue

you really think sales tax is just about that? it's a tax on the value the company made to the product by acting as the mover for the product. you might not agree that it's a good taxing system to tax trade, but as long as you do it doesn't make much sense that if you order from the next state, possibly just a stones throw away, you would gain a tax advantage by ordering it via post.

from outside of USA perspective it has taken ridiculous amount of time for the americans to sort out the sales tax issue - so

Whether for, or against, is irrelevant, but if we are arguing these things let's make sure we use the correct terms. It could be argued that without the socialist handouts that these people would starve and that should be avoided, (the socialist solution) or it could be argued that without those socialist handouts the people would not accept the lower wages and wages would go up as people refused to work at the lower wages (the capitalist sol

I am not sure your argument, but the way you say 'you fucking people' makes me think a few things

1. you pay alot of taxes and you assume it just goes to everyone else2. you have the ability to leave the country.

So if 'you fucking people' are USA citizens, your answer is to leave the country. Dont worry, nobody is going to cry cause your.0001 cents is missing from what ever those fucking people are using it for.